Scrapping Modems, Routers, Switches for Gold, Palladium & Tantalum

There's some good circuit boards to be got from routers, switches, modems etc.
Here's a look at a good sampling of what you can find in them, modems are something I pick up a lot of, even during hard rubbish season they are easy to spot for me, a lot of scrappers leave them maybe because they're so small but I like 'em.
routers and switches can have telecom grade boards so very high value for gold recovery as well as mlcc's for palladium & tantalum capacitors

[@csilk3621]

That was a great video Ben, thanks. I liked that you went through them all and explained the valuable components so that by the end of the vid you completely understood what you need to look for! 👍

[@TheTorkerman]

I initially held off watching this due to its 1 hour length, but glad I have seen it now, thanks again Ben, great video

[@shaneyork300]

Loved this vid!! So many cool boards! Thanks Ben!!!

[@quickcurechef5373]

Thank you for this greatEST training! All the best🍻 👍🌟

[@lt.punchdrunkington7123]

Awesome video! I learned a ton keep them coming ben!!

[@r.j.w.1456]

Ben, I like your videos lot of info Thank you

[@Dan01554]

Hi Ben. worth checking this out. Steve Tinter, a collector in Sydney, Australia, says he sometimes spends hours studying wafers under a microscope to identify chips and their manufacturers. His holdings of more than 1,000 wafers include rarities like creations of former supercomputer maker nCube Corp. and many unidentified wafers from Xerox Corp. "I have no idea what they are even after trying to find out for more than a year," he says. Danny.

[@ephraimt1]

7:32 "So that's that one" (Proceeds to throw the gold across the table) lol😂😂😂

[@arrowskicks3744]

I work at a thrift store. We get everything electrics. I just recently realized gold fingers, ect. Most was going to e-waste. Now I'm slowing down doing quick checks. Snatch and grab easy stuff.

[@harveychenier5860]

i learn so much from you thank you for doing this

[@Bradjgonnuscio]

love the video Ben. your awesome m keep them coming.

[@williamspaulding1573]

One of the VERY BEST videos you have shared with us!

[@zackcat276]

P.S. I'm with you on the hoarding idea! Haha. I love stacking stuff up too and not being in a hurry to sell. I think one day whenever I sell all this crap I may be more sad to see it go than to have the cash! Lol

[@xylz1798]

looks good ben. i have a ton theses too.but i try to depopulate everything i can.

[@teddybear1829]

What are the bronze looking wires on the boards? Is it Copper????

[@JP-gv4vi]

Thanks Ben for the info. Great video as always. Good stuff!

[@TheAndreaus]

Great video

[@StLimb]

wow / there's a lot of / I've never seen / Thanks your video

[@jacopieterse4325]

Ben do you collect the heat sinks and scrap them aluminium??

[@Ascaso_iF]

How do you get these things?

[@rodneysrepurposingrecyclin3821]

I don't ever get the chance to tear down my switches. they sell fast around here. If I get ones with gigabyte ports they sent for good money. only ones I get to bust apart are the non working. like those pins in them. usually good recovery ratio.

[@shadowzedge5793]

I'm of the mindset of "See a screw, remove a screw". When I take an item apart I take it totally to bits to separate everything I can be it Ally, Steel, copper, gold, and plastics.

[@user-ej5ln6oi6i]

Thank you for the informative video. Great job and well detailed. Many thanks....

[@WayneRiesterer]

That's about as thorough as any human could achieve. Nice work! What do you do with the power supplies and fans?

[@deborahlong4417]

PPS I do want to get the gold as pure as possible for making clay, but I'm not that concerned about the assay for lost wax casting.

[@Rob337_aka_CancelProof]

12:48 what is the values of the mlcc.? Do they all have the same value or are they different and if different how to identify them?

[@cu-plating8172]

Can you recycle Pd.?

[@bobroberts8500]

Any experience with WYSE routers or Maestro industrial routers?

[@dr.a006]

My kids call the circuit boards little cities with all the buildings 😄

[@bigcountryscrapper6885]

Great video lernt alot thanks

[@franciscoalves8515]

Parabéns sou seu fã

[@zackcat276]

You were saying about very light gold plating on that one "smart card" thAt came out of the Cisco 1600, and that reminded me to ask you if you've ever seen bus cable out of desktop pcs that are not gold plated? I've been taking the plastic clips off mine after I seen how you do it and I've noticed some of them appear like they have no gold plating on at all. Could it just be that light that I can't really see it? And how's your air hammer work out on smaller mlcc and tantalums?

[@eWasteBen]

+zackcat276 yep some have no plating, mostly cheap cable. most pins though will have at least a tiny dot on one tip, but yeah some just don't have anything, not common though.

[@TheEScrapMan]

those big rockwell ics should be kept seperate. they have unusually high yields. Just to let you all know.

[@jasonbailey7126]

hi, loving the videos. Can I ask a quick question - is it better to depopulate or sell as board? I presume selling as board gets less than removing everything and sorting etc. thanks

[@eWasteBen]

Depends on the board, some are better to sell as is because only high end refiners can get the value.

[@nicktoofar3514]

dudes so funny.... Man them crystals sure get him going... Dont mind the 50 to 1 nice chips here look at these lil crystals..... Too funny

[@billmelater9327]

How do you get your scrap?

[@pauldiefendorf5194]

+eWaste Ben can you possibly find a board similar to the one that you work on @ 50:25 or the same one and provide a rough estimation of weight for the fully populated board? Also, does your yard/buyer pay seperate for the ethernet (gold pinned) connections that you refer to on the switches ? Wondering if it is worth taking those off for seperate profit or keeping them on for weight of high grade telecom price. Thanks! Paul

[@eWasteBen]

+Paul Diefendorf there's only value in the ethernet sockets if your going to recover the gold from the pins, gold refiners would take everything off with plating but if your not depopulating boards and just selling as is then yes, you will get better value leaving them on the boards, those sockets are quite heavy but the gold pins are very small so if your not depopulating ic chips then you want to leave as much on the board as possible, maybe grab a few small things is your collecting bits like mlcc's, crystals or tantalum. That board weighed about 4 - 4.5 lb

[@pauldiefendorf5194]

+eWaste Ben thank you for the reply . Will consider all of this . Just getting into electronic recycling/scrapping and every bit of advice helps ! Thanks again

[@Ronke01]

so those MLCC's and the crystal oscilators/resonators contain gold as well then?

[@eWasteBen]

+Ronke's DIY Workshop mlcc's - palladium & silver, oscillators - gold & silver

[@Ronke01]

Ah thanks for that info ;) Just getting started in salvaging parts :P

[@xylz1798]

someone said that there is silver on the eproms the silver they say is the pins holding it to the board what to you think?

[@eWasteBen]

+Nate Chaps not sure, maybe some are but most would be tin

[@gcdrummer02]

Trying to get started in this as well. Where do you get all your stuff to scrap? Most places I speak with send their stuff out to big companies for recycling.

[@eWasteBen]

+chris hartmann Yeah well you don't have to be a big company like them but you do need to operate like a big company with website, advertising material and a professional look overall, otherwise try small businesses like pc repair shops, tv repair shops etc to get a start

[@nottoblame8830]

+eWaste Ben Office equipment shops have lots of old printers and copiers laying around. The copiers now days have hard drives and CPUs just like computers. Some of the old copiers have fuser rollers that are heavy duty aluminum. They are usually glad to just give them to you.

[@hengelhardcore3860]

Hi Ben thanks for the education, is there anywhere where I can submit a picture of some old PC parts I've obtained ? I could really use a hand !

[@eWasteBen]

[e-mail]

[@Jonawolff15]

Very Informative. Thank u very much 👏👏👏🙌

[@kalfaxplays7899]

you make it look so easy, i started scrapping yesterday when a family member threw out a flatscreen tv, and it took me a long time xD i got a nice amount of copper from it, not much gold, and a few crystals, i'm not sure what to do with the boards, don't know where to sell boards yet so i'll probably just give them away, i don't really know where to sell any of the stuff i'm removing from the boards, but figuring it out as i go. it was a lot of fun though, and i've learned a lot from watching your videos. ps: i couldn't get off the bga chips, should i get an air hammer for those? my flat screwdriver only ended up breaking it. i got some flatpacks, but a lot of chips were just not easy to get.

[@jcproject6408]

Hi, do you have an idea where to sell gold and crystals taken from the boards?

[@BelieveNoGod]

I see you use that air-hammer for scrapping parts. Don't chips have gold plated pins ? So all the pins are soldered to the board, won't that waste some gold ?

[@eWasteBen]

no most pins are tin plated copper, it's the insides that count

[@bantalee2002]

what metals are directly inside being layered within a motherboard? Thanks Ben.

[@eWasteBen]

+bantalee2002 don't think anything is layered within the board, it's all mostly printed onto the board after they first lay it with tin/lead where the component mount onto.

[@eWasteBen]

+eWaste Ben there might be copper layered in it first but it's only very thin

[@bantalee2002]

Agreed that could be the way most are composed by today standards as i can put them to a light and see through it with little obstruction. But If you ever find a heavily populated, early computer motherboard from say the late 90's-mid 2000,.crack it open, use a magnifying glass. There appears to be layers,some having fine wires intertwined with other metals that could be gold.

[@jayupstateny13650]

i worked in a board shop, and we would get in these crates of copper balls. of course that is irrisistable to people that like to steal. and workers would constantly get fired for stealing. so these balls got melted down and our boards had a thin layer of copper.

[@rookierollhunter8652]

What precious metal is in a MLCC?

[@eWasteBen]

PD/AG

[@grubbin6432]

A lot of Netgear stuff has lifetime warranties. You might ought to check that before you scrapped them. Mainly the high end switches etc. you could use or resell them that way.

[@xylz1798]

copper motors to!

[@pub-g3093]

Hey Ben love the videos, whats the best way to test pins to tell if they are silver?. I get hundreds of the same boards and I believe I have 8 one inch silver pins on each.

[@eWasteBen]

+patrick trently get them refined, no way to test as is but why would they be silver?

[@pub-g3093]

Just pins and contact points on the boards so I am assuming there silver, wanted to test them to be sure

[@eWasteBen]

most likely tin, what kind of board?

[@pub-g3093]

+eWaste Ben telecom boards, used in tap cans on telephone poles.

[@eWasteBen]

+patrick trently well they may be silver, still hard to tell until you refine them so do a batch and see what you get.

[@frediew8010]

hey" Ben" yes i pickup the 40 switch boxs all cisco real nice im having fun now" tthank you for your heads up on the Servers info" they were $4.00 ea and know free deals.

[@eWasteBen]

+fredie w that'll keep you busy for a while, good job

[@nick291002]

bought 20 towers for 100 euro today, got 6 full bigtower hp servers for free so well worth it. 5 pc's will sell for 10 each, steck cards and almost a kilo ram pay for the rest. everything else is free!

[@alvaliable]

like for the chiken

[@xylz1798]

wish i knew what everything was

[@frediew8010]

hey"Ben real nice job" i know a place in san diego were i can pick up 40 switch box's with 24 ports thank you for the in sight " ther asking about $4.00 EACH FOR THEM IS that a fair price ? and do you think ill get my $$ back out of them ? thank you for all you do for all your fans !

[@eWasteBen]

+fredie w thanks fredie, hard to say without seeing the boards inside, if telecom grade then I know they sell up your way for around $3.50lb, you might get close to 2lb boards. so your up there, if you depopulate the ic's etc and can sell depopulated boards then you would be getting better value again, if cisco then you should do well but I can't see you will lose anyway, try and get some free stuff off them, maybe they have some scrap they can give you to sweeten the deal.

[@LBurner7612]

is it possible to start a small business doing this?

[@eWasteBen]

+VSLarryOG Sure but it all starts with getting the e-waste in the first place

[@ivsongold322]

👍🏾👍🏾♻️✅ super

[@barrymoore4977]

If i was to depopulate the whole board can you put the capacitors in dirty alloy tub etc then at the end just put empty board in the steel bin need a basic beginners video on scrapping the whole of the units cheers Ben

[@eWasteBen]

yep, dirty ally for capacitors & scrap steel for the left overs

[@CodyMechanix]

The camera is kinda swirly...

[@MSApeace]

Nice video but switch the steadicam option off or whatever is doing that wiggling in the picture it is very irritating to watch especially on long videos.

[@phamdinhhoang1998]

anti shaking setting makes video looks weird

[@Bassillixx]

If i only had a dollar for every time he says . . . " DEPOPULATE " . . .

[@Jakopz]

uhhhh E Waste ben.exe has stopped working 41:20

[@stevemicheals5232]

i loved the video but the wiggling of the picture is not good

[@mohammedchriqi5240]

مساء الأحد في

[@lonewolfgeoff]

wow! that wibberly wobberly effect is really odd! accidental but wowah does amazing things to your eyes! lol great vid tho!

[@benjaminsnyder6729]

my name Ben I got a lot Nintendo game a lot gold ok

[@cherylashton6926]

You have to have at least 100 pounds of it to make any kind of money.

[@CRSolarice]

You talk too much, get on with the bloody show!